The Daring Bakers Pizza Toss!

When I was in Vancouver this summer at the EAT! Vancouver show, I had the pleasure of watching Bob Blumer demonstrate his Pizza on the Grill. I then visited my friend Karen and she made me a fantastic pizza with a potato dough. I love homemade pizza!

When the Daring Bakers challenge was announced this month, I was thrilled to hear it was pizza...but of course this was a special pizza...the dough was adapted from Peter Reinhart's pizza dough from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. It is sooooo good, you could almost leave out the toppings and sit down and just eat the crust!

Part of the challenge was the pizza toss and I regret to say that even though I made six 6 inch pizzas, only four made it to the oven.





Thanks to Rosa of Rosa's Yummy Yums for hosting this month's challenge. You can find the recipe on Rosa's blog. The combinations of toppings are endless but sometimes - the simpler the better. The recipe follows for the five-minute Amatrici-Style sauce (which I love and is easy to make) from Bob Blumer's and Elizabeth Karmel's book Pizza on the Grill. The book has some very interesting pizzas.

8 strips bacon chopped
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 14.5 -ounce can chopped tomatoes, undrained
1 clove garlic, minced or grated
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Preheat a pan 1 to 2 minutes and add the bacon and a little oil.
Stir to brown the bacon bits and then drain the fat from the pan.
Add the tomatoes and stir until warmed through
Add the garlic, red pepper flakes and the rest of the oil.
Simmer for another minute then remove from the heat.
Season with salt and pepper and cool before using.
This can keep, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.


These were the combinations I chose:
five-minute Amatrici-Style sauce (recipe above)
cappicola and a combination of mozzarella and cheddar cheeses

five-minute Amatrici-Style sauce
pepperoni, fresh yellow peppers and a combination of mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses.

You can even try some sweet versions with chocolate and pears and walnuts and...

Well...it's all fun and games until the pizza dough hits the floor... no... even then it's fun!

Until we bake again
Penny

Beignets...Café du Monde

My many years working in the travel industry has allowed me the luxury of tasting many different foods and wonderful desserts.
One visit was to New Orleans, Louisiana, a fabulous place to visit if you like food, music and lots of fun! And one of my favorite stops is Café du Monde in the French Market. The French Market is comprised of seven buildings, anchored at the Jackson Square end by the Café du Monde and on the other end by the Farmers and Flea Market sheds. You must visit this area when you go to New Orleans!

The Café du Monde is famous for its beignets (pronounced BEN yays). The beignet is a square piece of dough, fried and covered with powdered sugar. It's kind of like a donut without the hole...but much better! On one of my visits, I picked up the mix to make these delicious little fritters at home. Elliot (my son), has been my official taster over the years. It was just the two of us, but now he has a tasting apprentice, Dan, my wonderful husband. When the two of them get together and critique my baking, it is quite amusing.

Elliot loved these beignets and then the unthinkable happened... ohhhh yesss.... I ran out of the mix!!!! He was young and really didn't understand how I was relying on a box of powdered beignets. He looked at me in that son-ly way and asked if I could make them anyhow. "But this is special powdered beignets...from New Orleans...I don't know how to make them". Off I went, searching through recipe books until I found a beignet recipe. You can order the mix online now. but... these are better than the mix....even Elliot thinks so.
The recipe is from a wonderful little cookbook called James McNair's Breakfast.

Here's the recipe:

· ¾ cup warm water

· ½ package quick-rising active dry yeast
· ¼ cup granulated sugar
· ½ teaspoon salt
· ½ cup canned evaporated milk
· 1 egg, lightly beaten
· 2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
· 3 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
· Vegetable oil for deep frying
· Powdered sugar for dusting

1. Sprinkle the yeast over the water in a small bowl and stir to dissolve. Let it stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, salt, evaporated milk, egg and shortening.

3. Stir in the yeast and mix well.

4. Gradually add the flour, about 1 ½ cups at a time, mixing until blended. (You can use a mixer with a dough hook or just use your hands once it gets too difficult to mix with your spoon). Note: if you plan on mixing a lot of dough in the future, you may want to get one of King Arthur Flour’s dough whisks. I love mine.

5. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Either refrigerate it several hours or overnight.

Note: I recommend you making it until this point the night before, so you can easily complete it in the morning for breakfast/brunch.

6. Heat vegetable oil in a deep fryer or heavy pot until approx. 360 degrees. (3 inches depth)

7. Pat or roll out the dough until ¼ inch...not too thin! Cut the dough into 2 x 3 inch rectangles with a sharp knife - or use square biscuit cutters...it really doesn’t matter! Keep them relatively the same size though, so they will take about the same time to fry.

8. Drop them 3 at a time into the hot oil , turning a few times with tongs or a slotted spoon until golden brown on all sides. DO NOT LEAVE THE STOVE!!! THEY NEED TO BE WATCHED!!!

9. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

Note: if they don't puff up they are either: too big, too thin or the temperature of the oil has decreased too much.

10. Sprinkle very generously with powdered sugar .

11. Now put on some Zydeco music and serve these amazing beignets while they are hot /warm with coffee or tea..and imagine you are sitting in the french quarter in the fabulous city of New Orleans.

Bet you can't eat one!

Until we bake again!

Penny